Sakura groaned and raised her hand to her head. She swore she could feel screaming all around her as she grit her teeth and tried to remember what happened. But, the noise only seemed to be growing as she continued to gain consciousness. There were high pitched screams, low bleats of noise, voices that seemed to be swinging sweetly, and everything in between. They overlapped to create a cacophony that only caused her to wince in pain.
Eventually, she was able to crack her eyes open and covered her ears in a desperate attempt to block out all the noise, but it only helped marginally. Blinking, she frowned when she was met with a dark grey landscape.
The sky and ground were only separated by a few shades of grey, the sky being darker and filled with black, drifting clouds. The ground was drab, with rocks and dead trees littered around her as the place extended on for miles until it bled into the equally dreadful sky. Swallowing thickly, Sakura hugged herself as she realized she was the only thing of any color in this world of grey.
No matter how much she looked around, there wasn't another soul. However, the noises hadn't diminished in the least. There didn't seem to be any one place the many sounds were coming from.
Wobblily, Sakura got to her feet. She remembered performing the reverse summoning, but now the issue was trying to find out where it had sent her. As she tried to figure out what had happened, it was quite difficult with the noise surrounding her and trying to pound into her head. Already, she could feel a throbbing taking over her head as she tried to ignore the pain.
"Hello?" She called out, desperately trying to be heard over all the noise.
Everything stopped.
As if they hadn't occurred at all, the sounds disappeared, and she was left in deafening silence. Flinching at the lack of assault on her ears, Sakura whipped her head around to try and find anything. None of the trees looked like they had been alive in decades, while the landscape was bare of anything other than a few piles of pebbles.
"Is anyone there?" She asked, voice softer this time, in fear of her own ability to make noise of disappearing as well. No matter how long she waited, there was not response. "Please! Is there anyone here?"
Growing frustrated, Sakura tried to think of anything that would help her in this situation. Did she do something wrong? She swore she had done all the signs right and everything, there was no logical reason as to why she shouldn't be meeting a summons by now. Would she be forced to do the technique again to get home? Had she failed?
At that last thought, she shook herself. She wasn't a failure! She had simply not figured out what was happening, that was all!
Taking a deep breath, she reached out with her chakra and couldn't feel anything.
Shit.
"That won't work here."
"Ah!"
Swirling around, she tried to locate the voice that had spoken, but was met with nothing other than a dead landscape. Heart pounding, Sakura slipped a kunai into her palm and continued to scan her eyes all around her.
"That won't help either," the voice laughed cruelly. The voice sounded cracked and worn, as if the being speaking hadn't had a drink of water in a century. It's pitched changed mid-syllable, and impossible to pinpoint where exactly it was coming from. "You came to our land, hatchling. This is not like your world. You are at our mercy."
"Hatchling?" Sakura breathed out. She felt a stab of guilt at thinking about how Orochimaru must be worried about her. He had strictly forbidden her from doing high level jutsu without supervision, and her she was, summoning herself into a completely different world. She was going to be in so much trouble.
"Just barely out of your egg," the voice crooned. "It is a miracle you haven't simply fallen out of the nest and broken your neck."
"Where are you? Identify yourself." She tried to keep her voice steady, but the voice didn't seem affected in the least.
"So young, so naïve," the voice sighed.
Suddenly, a gust of wind blew right at her, forcing her to shield her face as dust and rock were whipped up and flew away. Wiping dust from her face, she looked around and spotted something sticking out of the ground. Squinting, she saw something sharp glinting in the unnatural light of this world.
"Come here, hatchling."
Cautiously, Sakura crept close to the object and saw that it was bleached bone. It was mostly buried with only a point poking out. The wind must have uncovered it enough for her to find it. This couldn't possibly be where the voice was coming from, was it?
"That's it, hatchling." The voice encouraged her. Nodding, Sakura knew what to do.
Without a second thought, she dropped to her knees and began digging at the compact earth that surrounded the bone. Gradually, she uncovered more and more of the object, which turned out to be a skull. The part that had been poking out had been the very tip of its beak, which had nearly cut her. Her kunai helped to uncover the skull, but the more she dug, the larger it seemed to be.
The beak alone was as long as her arm, the eye sockets almost as big as her own head. She struggled to pull the whole thing out of the ground as it weighed too much for her still undeveloped muscles. Eventually, she had it out of the hole she dug, and she was left staring at the largest bird skull she had ever seen.
"Good job, hatchling," the skull spoke to her without any reasonable way of doing so. Staring transfixed, Sakura could only nod numbly. The skull was stark white with the dust barely staining it. It almost shone like a beacon in this strange place. "You have many questions."
"Why is this place like this?" She blurted out.
There were a million questions running through her mind, and she didn't know why this one had been at the forefront of her mind. In the book Kakashi had gotten her, she had assumed the land of summons would be filled to the brim with life as it was supposed to support life for all summons. But, this was nothing like that; this was a barren waste land. What had happened?
"You are the first in centuries to come here," the skull spoke evenly.
"So, everything died because there were no other summoners?"
"Precisely. Why do you think the deer, the dogs, and other common summons flourish? Many of our kin have been tied to your world, but we have been left to become dust."
A gust of wind even stronger than last time hit her, and Sakura was forced to grab onto the skull for purchase unless she would be thrown backwards. It felt as if it went on forever as dust blew into her face, small rock biting into her skill as she ducked her head low. With the noise, a low whistle floated into her ears, warbling and clicking occasionally as if trying to call out to her. Eventually, the wind died out, but the low whistles continued.
"Open your eyes, hatchling."
Doing so, Sakura's mouth went dry as her eyes took in the landscape that had once been an endless expanse of grey dirt, but was now a graveyard. Every inch of the ground had skulls of all shapes and sizes littered across of it. None of the skulls reached the size of the one she clung to, but by the bleached bone of each of them, they had all been buried and left to rot for longer than she would ever know.
"What happened?" She whispered.
"Our contracts died with our summoners," the skull explained simply. "There are hundreds of lands that look just like ours. Long forgotten and with no hope to ever recover. We have accepted our fate long ago."
"That's not right!" Sakura was quick to say. Biting her lip, she tried to rein her feelings in. The skull didn't react in any way, which she would more shocked if it did. She glanced around and felt her heart ache at the sight of all of these skulls reaching into the distance. All of them had known a long time ago that they would never have a second chance; even summons would be met with the fate all of them were meant to have. Looking back at the skull in front of her, Sakura straighten up. "Is there any way for me to help?"
"How could you help, hatchling? Everything that was meant to pass had already done so. There is not much you could do change what has happened here."
"I…"
It was right. How was she supposed to help a land of forgotten summons? She had not read anything about this, and with her restricted abilities, there wasn't much she could do to help. There had to be several hundred skulls all around her, all having been lost to time and loneliness. Clenching eyes close, she willed the tears to stay at bay.
"I want to help, in any way that I can," she whispered.
"How?"
"I don't know," she shook her head. Feeling like a fool, she met the empty eye sockets that stared back at her unfeelingly. The dark void sent a shiver down her spine, but she didn't dare tear her gaze away. "I brought myself here to meet my summons, so there must be something I'm meant to do to revive you. What must I do?"
"You are very stubborn."
"My mom says I'm as stubborn as my great-grandmother."
"I do not know who that is, but I am inclined to agree."
"I get that a lot," Sakura chuckled. No matter how odd it was joking around with a talking skull, she felt a sort of kinship with it. If she was meant to be here, then it wasn't surprising she would get along with those that would be by her side for as long she held their contract.
"You must complete a task if you wish to revive our contract, but," the skull warned. "It will not be easy. If you fail to complete it, you will never be invited back to the summoning world, and we will perish indefinitely. Do you accept?"
With no hesitation, Sakura nodded.
"Good," the voice sounded pleased by her decision. "You must find my feather."
Sakura frowned.
"What do you mean?"
"Find my feather," the skull explained. "And I will have my power restored. If I am brought back, then I all shall be at your service."
"What does your feather look like?"
"I cannot tell you."
"Why not?"
"That would make it far too easy," the skull cackled. Glaring, Sakura looked around the barren area. How was she supposed to find anything here, especially when she didn't even know what the feather looked like? What if it was all grey, then what would happen? "Time is ticking, hatchling."
"It is?" She was surprised. Did the summoning world follow the same sense of time as her world?
"I can already feel a snake slinking around," the skull hissed. "It is searching for something. Hurry, or else all will be lost."
"But the snakes are my sensei's summons!" Sakura insisted. "They wouldn't hurt me."
"No summon is allowed into each other's areas without an intent towards harm."
"They're not like—!"
"You know nothing of the way of summons!" The skull screeched, its voice booming and echoing out through the empty land. "You came here to sign our contract! If you wish to side with another, then leave!"
Grimacing, Sakura bowed her head. Kakashi had warned her that summons were impossibly possessive and refused to share.
"I apologize. I have accepted your quest and intend to finish it."
The skull didn't reply.
Sakura got to her feet, even more determined that before. She had summoned herself to this graveyard and had promised to restore it; this was her responsibility. If there was anything she had learned from her family, teachers, and friends, it was not to break the promises you made, no matter what. These summons had been forgotten to the point they didn't have a shred of hope left of being revived. Even with her being here now, they did not have any faith in her being able to help them.
She would change that. She had changed—no longer the little girl she had been, she knew she could be strong for her new summons.
Head held high, she stepped forward to search for the missing feather.
Truth be told, she had no idea where to begin. There were no clues as to where it could be hiding, what it looked like, or if it even existed. She had been talking to a skull, so who knew if she wasn't in a coma and hallucinating all of this.
Deciding to be systematic, she began to scan the ground and other skulls for a hint of a feather. With no coloring to go off of from the skull, she was out of luck in that sense, but she tried to think of anywhere a feather could be. There wouldn't be much use in digging around the skull since that would take far too long, so she decided to look at the branches of the trees. If they had been the homes of the birds, then perhaps a feather would have been left in a nest.
She had been partially right. There were remnants of different nests, but not a single feather amongst them. The only good thing was there weren't many trees to search, but there were far too many skulls for her to analyze and dig out of the ground to truly be a useful way to spend her limited time. Using the main skull as a focus point, she moved in a half mile radius around it to search for the feather.
Could the feather be further away than that? There was no way to confirm or deny that thought, so she could only hope that the feather would be close by. Coming back to the skull, Sakura flopped down in front of it.
"Giving up already, hatchling?" The skull snarked.
"No," she huffed in frustration. "How am I suppose to find something so lost? I don't have any tools, no clues, and no idea if you're just not sending me on a wild goose chase!"
"That is the question, how do you find something you don't know even exists?" The skull pondered. "But, you came here looking for something that you didn't know existed."
"I didn't know if I would receive a summons, but I knew they existed," Sakura pointed out.
"Yes. As you know that the feather must exist since I wasn't simply a skull for my entire existence."
"But, I don't even know what you looked like," she frowned. "I know nothing about you."
"Also, very true."
Sakura narrowed her eyes. Why did the skull sound amused by that? She had only admitted something, so what could be humorous about that? There was nothing she knew about the summon other than the skull she was staring at; it was large, so heavy she couldn't even lift it, and the beak was sharp enough to cut easily.
But, that implied she did know something about it, and the voice had just confirmed she knew nothing.
"I'm looking in the wrong place," she thought aloud.
"At the moment, you're not even looking."
"Stop being pedantic."
Crawling close to the skull, she peered inside an eye socket and was met with a darkness that was so thick, none of the odd light penetrated it. Staring intently, Sakura slowly pushed her hand inside of the skull. For a few long seconds, there was nothing but empty space around her fingers as she pushed her arm inside up to the elbow. Her tongue stuck out slightly as she desperately moved her hand inside, until…
Her hand brushed a soft feather.
"Shit!" She screamed.
Pain raced up her arm and spread across her entire body. Pullin her hand out, she watched in horror as her skin began to turn dark red, her veins pulsing under her skin and turn purple. Tears spilled down her cheeks as the burning sensation wrapped around every single nerve ending, and reached out towards her heart with creeping fingers. Gasping, she clawed at her chest with her hands to try and keep the substance from reaching it.
"Please…" She gasped.
Falling forward, her forehead brushed the skull in front of her. The rush of blood filled her ears, but she swore she heard a low whistling coming from inside the skull. Blinking rapidly, she couldn't even move her head as a flurry of black and orange feather danced in front of her head. Her throat was closing quickly and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
"Breath, hatchling."
Air rushed down her throat. Gulping down air greedily, Sakura let snot and tears continue down her face as she watched the little bird in front of her hop around. Its head and wings were black while its belly and back were a vibrant orange. A color of danger in the wild.
"You have many assumptions," the little bird spoke to her in the skull's voice. "You knew nothing as you searched for me, but in finding me, you wrought pain and suffering upon yourself. You listened to my empty words and trusted the assumptions that you came here with. That will get you killed."
"I thought I would have to pass the test of my summons," Sakura's voice was hoarse, and she swallowed thickly. "You gave me the wrong test."
"That I did," the little bird nodded solemnly. "However, I needed to know if I could trust you. If I am to give you my power, then I needed to know the true you. Do you regret coming here?"
Did she?
Still twitching in pain, Sakura stared at the little bird. One little touch had made her collapse in agony she had never experienced before. The bird could fit in her hand with ease, but it was so dangerous, it had probably killed the bird the skull belonged to. So unassuming, yet so deadly.
That's what she wanted to be.
Everyone saw her as a weakling, but she was far from that. If she could finally make everyone realize just how menacing she could be, then they would finally become the shinobi she was meant to be.
"I don't regret coming here," she breathed out. Blinking hazily, she felt her mind slipping again. "I want you to be my summons, will you have me?"
"Of course, hatchling," the little bird crooned. "I was yours the moment you arrived."
"What's your name?" Sakura murmured, and painfully reached her hand out for the bird. She tensed slightly as it landed on her fingers, but no other pain came. Black spots were encroaching on her vision, but she desperately watched the little bird.
"Gaidoku," it was said as if a prayer, and Sakura's body sagged in relief. She had done it. She had finally received her own summons. "Sleep, hatchling. Your body is changing, and it will be a long process."